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This is a big deal for Facebook and its competitors. Facebook now has an investment from Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing, two of the most influential business people today, and tomorrow. Forget all other details. With the insight and capital behind these two names, the sky could be the limit for Facebook. If you are a Facebook competitor, your world view just changed. Not because of what is, but because of what could be. Now with that said, investors like Gates and Ka-shing place bets in many places and there is always a chance the Facebook bet could flop; however, with the resources behind these two, it is hard to think that would happen.

Li Ka-shing and Bill Gates are both self made men that amassed a huge fortune and sphere of influence. Warren Buffet is another name that comes to mind along these lines. They all are, however, very different from each other. Ka-shing has a very interesting (we could say legendary) past. You can get much more depth elsewhere (read Sterling Seagrave’s “Lords of the Rim” for starters; “The Soong Dynasty” is another good one by Seagrave), but here is a small snapshot: he fled China due to the seismic political shift brought about by Mao and Communist China, he made his first fortune selling plastic flowers to foreign (U.S.) markets, he has one of the tightest and most formidable (human) networks in the world (big back story there), he has an impressive business empire today (that makes you wonder what is not visible on the surface). His son, Richard Li, went to Standford and made his mark as the head of Pacific Century CyberWorks, once a Hong Kong Internet high flyer that has experienced a rough ride since the end of the dotcom boom (more on Richard at the Economist – here, here, here).

I don’t want to overplay a single investment made by an entity under someone — Li — that makes many many investments. But in the world of Internet Tech, the Facebook game just got much, much more interesting… because of what Gates and Li could bring to the table.

Google?

(source) More on the Facebook/Ka-shing story at AllThingsD…

Facebook Nabs $60 Million Investment from Li Ka-shing

Update:

Also, more at Mashable, the Guardian, and I am sure soon-to-be many other places…